LibGuides: Japanese Studies: Primary Sources

How to Find Primary Sources

Primary or Scondary Sources?
Examples of primary sources: interviews, diaries, letters, journals, original hand-written manuscripts, newspaper and magazine clippings, government documents, etc.
History How To: Primary Sources
A guide to finding primary sources prepared by Tina Bebbington

Select Primary Sources for Japanese Studies

Empire Online This project has been developed to encourage undergraduates, postgraduates, academics and researchers to explore colonial history, politics, culture and society. Material in the collection spans five centuries, charting the story of the rise and fall of empires; from the explorations of Columbus, Captain Cook, and others, right through to de-colonisation in the second half of the twentieth century and debates over American Imperialism.
First World War: Personal Experiences Drawn from archival collections around the world, The First World War: Personal Experiences offers remarkable glimpses at how people lived their lived during the Great War. Contains diaries, autograph books, candid snapshots, souvenirs, sketches and jottings, and other artifacts that are all too often lost to history.
Global NewsBank Contains information on current issues and events selected from more than 1500 international sources, including translated broadcasts, news agency tramsmissions, newspapers, periodicals and government documents.
Meiji Japan: The Edward Sylvester Morse Collection from the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum Collection of Edward Sylvester Morse who was one of the first Americans to live in Japan. He went there on a scientific expedition in 1877 and made notes on subjects as diverse as shop signs, fireworks, hairpins, agricultural tools, artists’ studios, music, games, printing, carpentry, the Ainu, gardens, household construction, art and architecture.

Japanese General Social Surveys (JGSS) Cumulative Data, 2000-2003 This collection is the combination of surveys designed to solicit political, sociological, and economic information from people living in Japan from 2000 to 2003.
Local and Regional Elections: Tokyo, Japan, 1963 This study was conducted in Japan in 1963 with respondents from the metropolitan Tokyo area, the five largest cities in Japan, other smaller cities, and Japanese towns and villages.
World and Japan database データベース｢世界と日本」 Akihiko Tanaka Research; the database provides full-text access to many historical documents for studying Japan's international relationship since 20th century.

Web Resources:

Digital Silk Road Project Digital Silk Road Project is a digital humanities research project about creating digital archives of cultural heritage based on collaboration between informatics and humanities.
E-TOPIA Exchange Materials and Textbooks Primary resource on Japanese Education History
Heian Period Diaries It currently includes Shōyūki (diary of Fujiwara no Sanesuke, 16 parts; now available is part 1, which covers the period 974 to 988, some portions lost); Gonki (diary of Fujiwara no Yukinari); Midō Kanpakuki (diary of Fujiwara no Michinaga); Shunki (diary of Fujiwara no Sukefusa); Saikyūshō.
Japan Center for Asian Historical Records アジア歴史資料センター This site provides access to official documents—dating from the Meiji era through 1945—of the Japanese Cabinet, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the Army and Navy.
Japanese Historical Text Initiative University of California, Berkeley; You will find here texts of important historical documents and their English translation.
Sōda Archives The Sōda Collection, originally the collection of the medical historian SŌDA Hajime (1921-1996), contains books and prints related to the history of medicine, history of pharmacy, and the cultural history of medicine.

Japan Search: Find Digital Archives in Japan
It supports cross-searches in NDL digital collections, digital archive system, museum collections and the Japanese National Bibliography.
Center for Open Data in the Humanities in Japan
digital humanities tools, datasets and projects
"I just want the data!": A short guide to GSI Japan for non-Japanese-speaking users
This source has English interface, providing rich geospatial information related to Japan such as the Gazetteer of Japan and the National Atlas of Japan.
抗日战争与近代中日关系文献数据平台 Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)
This is database of primary sources about the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). It provides key-word search and full-text access to the magazines, pamphlets, pictures, archives and audio/visual materials.

Migration to New Worlds
From the century of immigration, through to the modern era, Migration to New Worlds charts the emigration experience of millions across 200 years of turbulent history. Explore the rise and fall of the New Zealand Company, discover British, European and Asian migration and investigate unique primary source personal accounts, shipping logs, printed literature and organisational papers supplemented by carefully compiled teaching and research aids.

I Know We'll Meet Again Correspondence and the forced dispersal of Japanese Canadians
This is a digital exhibit of UBC Library’s collection of wartime letters written by Japanese Canadian youth during the 1940s
Japan Times Digital Archive (1897-2016)
The Japan Times Digital Archive delivers over a century of Japanese perspectives on news, history, and world affairs. It is the only English-language Japanese newspaper archive of this depth.
The Okinawan Migration Record database.
This is a migration record database about Japanese diasporas in the world

Japan Times Digital Archive 1897-2016 1999+

Access World News Use the map to quickly locate four Japan publications.
89 newspapers from British Columbia are also included, going back to 2004 (some are earlier). These include the 100 Mile House Free Press, Gulf Islands Driftwood, Saanich News, and Oak Bay News.

Web Resources:

Asahi shinbun / 朝日新聞
Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection (Japanese diaspora)
The Hoji Shinbun digital collection is currently the world’s largest online archive of free-access, full-image newspapers published by overseas Japanese and their descendants.Most publications present a mix of content in Japanese and English. It includes 14 newspapers from Hawaii and North America.
Japan Today
Mainichi shinbun / 毎日新聞
Overseas Japanese-Language Newspapers Provided by International Research Center for Japanese Studies
Sankei shinbun / 産経新聞
Shinbun Kiji Bunko 新聞記事文庫 It includes news clippings from the end of Meiji to mid- Showa period.
Yomiuri shinbun / 読売新聞
Yuta Nippo (Japanese American Newspaper 1914-1991)
Shinbun kiji bunko 新聞記事文庫
This open access source provides search in newspaper clippings data from the end of the Meiji era to 1970. You can browse by newspapers or subjects.
National Diet Library Search
For searching newspaper articles, Zenkoku shinbun sōgō mokuroku 全国新聞総合目録 has been incorporated in the NDL search. Please use Japanese keywords to search.

ADEAC: a system of digitization and exhibition for Japanese archive collections
This is a platform for displaying the digital projects of various Japanese archive collections.
Yukio Ozaki collection The collection consists of a 325 page carbon typescript autobiography (with 25 pages of endnotes) in translation. Personal and political reminiscences and observations covering childhood, period as a newspaper editor in Meiji (1879); Mayor of Tokyo, and political and parliamentary activities. The original text was written in 1920, and the translation, possibly edited by John Soffell, perhaps in the 1930's.
Japanese Censorship Collections - Library of Congress
The Japanese Censorship Collection contains 1,327 marked-up copies of censored monographs and galley proofs for approximately 1,100 titles, mostly from the 1920s and 1930s.

Japan e-Government Portal 電子政府の総合窓口
Web Archiving Project (WARP）
The initiative preserves the websites of public organizations in Japan since 2002.